Why not “Dongwhacker Hill”? Why not, I say?

So, like, I like riding my bike. And I like reading shit about other people who ride bikes.

You probably do, too.

Have you noticed, though, how hard it is to give a crap about the Giro d’Italia?

It’s like cleaning out the hall closet. You get up in the morning and say “Today’s the day I’m gonna clean the hall closet!” Then the morning goes by because it’s such a nice day and you’ve had a leisurely cup of coffee and you’ve got the whole day to do it, so heck, you think, “I’ll do it in the afternoon.” Afternoon goes by and then it’s dinner and the food coma or beer fog sets in and you’re just like, “Aw fuckit, I’ll do it tomorrow. First thing tomorrow morning.”

Keeping up with the Giro is kind of like that.

You’re supposed to keep up with it. You kind of want to keep up with it. You know that the REAL cycling fans keep up with it. But truth be told it’s no sexier than the hall closet.

I’ve identified the main reasons that we don’t like the Giro, and listed them below for your convenience.

1. Too many foreign words

Everything’s in Italian. This is the biggest problem. If it was in English, it would be lots easier to read about. Studies show that putting foreign words in the middle of a sentence makes the sentence go down like dirt pizza. The only cycling language worse than Italian is Flemish. How’s a normal person going to even start to get a handle on “Hooydonck?” Mouth it out loud to yourself in a public place around small children and you’ll get arrested.

One way to fix the foreign words in the Giro is to make them in English. So yesterday, instead of saying they went from “Pfalzen to Cortina d’Ampezzo” you could say they went from “Hooterville to Dongwhacker Hill.” Even your grandpa could read through that without choking. Granny, maybe not so much.

2. No peer pressure

If you don’t know what’s going on with the Turdy France, you’re made to feel like an outcast. Your buddies have TWAP’s (tour watching parties), and even your non-biker friends seem to have a vague idea of what’s going on. “So is Lance gonna win again this year?” That kind of stuff. It’s like March Madness–if you can’t even pretend you know or care, you’re in deep social shit. Plus, if you have a Giro-watching party what are you gonna bring? Italian beer?

People who are up on the Giro are weird. Kind of snobby, almost like they know too much. Remember that dude who used to know how to use a slide rule? You didn’t pull him behind the bushes and beat the snot out of him because of anything personal, it was just the fact that he a) knew what a slide rule was for and b) knew how to use it. That’s why you were practically required to do some equalizing on his narrow ass.

3. Too many Italians

The success of the Turdy France is based on the fact that there are hardly any more French people in it. I know the French have won the World Cup in soccer, and they’ve had some good tennis dudes, but at the end of the day, or rather at the beginning, nobody wants to sit around and watch French people do athletic stuff. When the Turdy started letting Germans win, and Americans win, and Danish win, it started getting interesting. Even the Spaniards are okay. They’re the crazed bastards who kill raging bulls with a fucking folding knife. Muy macho.

So the Giro sucks because it’s basically just a bunch of Italians. I know they’re great bike racers and great soccer players and great singers and cooks and the world’s best war cowards, but in your heart of hearts you just don’t want to see them doing athletic stuff. Maybe a couple of them. Fucking. In a porno video. Otherwise, you get more than two Italians together at one time and you start wondering when somebody’s gonna put a horse’s head in your mattress. Blame it on Mario Puzo.

The “it” is Canadian rider Ryder Hesjedal. Despite the funny name and the double-entendre name, he’s a real Canadian: He only likes three seasonings (salt, pepper, ketchup). He knows which leaves make the best toilet paper. He thinks hockey is what happens before they get brain surgery. But for our purposes, he’s something else…an incredible bike racer.

Ryder Hesjedal, whose name is almost harder to pronounce than an Italian one and will therefore be called “Sam Johnson,” has ridden an extraordinary Giro, which sounds like a Greek sandwich but isn’t, and so we’ll call it “Tour.” Johnson pulled out all the stops in Stage 19, unleashing a beatdown on his Italian GC rivals Joey Humdinger and Billy Tubbsworth. By finishing second on the monolithic climb up Mt. Dongwhacker, he is now in position to take the overall victory on Sunday.

Sunday’s final stage will be a 31.5 km time trial finishing on the streets of Italy’s most majestic city, Hooterville. Despite being written off before the start of the stage up Mt. Dongwhacker, Johnson took thirteen seconds out of Joaquim Rodriguez’s (English name: Pooter McGee’s) lead at the top of the maglia rosa (“manly jersey” in English) standings and now lies just 17 seconds behind him. Just as importantly he also extended his own lead over Humdinger and Billy Tubbsworth.

After today’s sensational ride, Johnson is poised to win it all. Good on ya’ mate. (Canada’s part of Australia, right?)